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A free-associative conversation in pencil. One of us starts a drawing and we pass it back and forth until it is declared “done”. A great way to pass a slow afternoon at an art show and sometimes a generator of some interesting ideas.

We always bring paintings to work on during shows. It’s great to get work done while we’re sitting there and I think it’s also nice for people to see a painting in progress. At the 4 Bridges Art Festival in Chattanooga we found our “explorer” walking through the art show. Celena and her husband Martin had a booth directly behind us. They create alternate worlds themselves, filled with magical creatures, complete with a quarterly newsletter called The Filiigree (which is a really fun read). Visit their site www.thefiligree.com to enter their world. We look forward to seeing them at a lot of shows in the future!

Now that we had our main character, Jim continued to work on the painting in Savannah in spite of cramped conditions and some seriously strong southern sun.

This is our very first blog post. Thanks to everyone on our mailing list who filled out the survey we created. If you gave us a complete mailing address, we’ll have your thank you gift in the mail to you soon.

From the survey, by far the most requested subject matter for our posts was to see how a painting comes to be. Sometimes paintings start with a sketch and pretty much look exactly as we plan them. In this case though, the painting evolved over time. Our paintings usually start as a very plain undercoating, often red or a warm burnt sienna.

From there an imaginary landscape evolved with a cliff off in the distance and a meandering waterway. Next came the ruins at the top of the cliff, creating an intriguing destination in the distance, setting the stage for a story. So who would enter this scene and make that long trek to those far away ruins? Quite frankly, we had no idea yet. Over the next few posts we’ll share with you the evolution of this painting.